On Sat, 2011-04-02 at 18:36 -0700, Walter Bright wrote: > Yes, except for something else - the rarity of need for octal literals. The > only > modern usage I've seen of it is for file permissions.
What is the use for binary literals or hexadecimal literals, I can't think of one. Except perhaps specification of register save masks and control status work literals -- which is of course where the octal stuff came from in the first place in C and when the VAX replaced PDP, hexadecimal was rapidly introduced. (*) I would suggest that rather than discriminating against people who like octal instead of decimal or hexadecimal, the solution of introducing 0o... in harmony with 0b... and 0x... -- and of course removing the leading 0 octal literal convention -- is obviously the right solution. It ticks all the boxes. (*) For anyone not immediately in the know here PDP had 8 registers and VAX 16 so octal and hexadecimal were the natural bases for specifying masks. The 68000 also played a part. The use of octal on the PDP actually goes a lot deeper than this, cf. Unibus, but it is all ancient history now. -- Russel. ============================================================================= Dr Russel Winder t: +44 20 7585 2200 voip: sip:russel.win...@ekiga.net 41 Buckmaster Road m: +44 7770 465 077 xmpp: rus...@russel.org.uk London SW11 1EN, UK w: www.russel.org.uk skype: russel_winder
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